The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

by Sanjeev Sanyal

  The next twist in the story took place with the discovery of diamond and gold deposits in South Africa. Till new deposits were found in Brazil during the eighteenth century, India had been the only source of diamonds in the world. The quantity and quality of South African diamonds, however, was at a different level altogether. This led to a mad rush. Within just a year of the first claims being made in 1867, fifty thousand people were living in tents and other temporary shelters in Kimberley. By 1871, there were more people in Kimberley than in Cape Town!23 In that year alone, South Africa exported 269,000 carats of diamonds. With the boom came dubious claims, financial manipulation and large-scale gun running. It is estimated that 75,000 guns were sold in Kimberley between April 1873 and June 1874.

  Eventually, order was restored and the entire operation at Kimberley was brought under the control of a single company; De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited was incorporated in 1888. The man behind this consolidation was Cecil Rhodes.

  Rhodes had arrived in Kimberley as a dirt-poor teenager but, over time, had managed to establish himself as a formidable businessman and canny speculator. With the backing of wealthy financiers like the Rothschilds, he eventually came to control all the diamond mines of Kimberley. In 1890, he would become the Prime Minister of Cape Colony. Rhodes now began to use his immense wealth and political power to push the interests of large mining magnates as well as expand the British empire at the cost of both the Boers and the African tribes. It is said that Rhodes wanted to expand the empire from Cape Town to Cairo. The discovery of large gold deposits in 1886 only added to the heady mix of greed and imperial ambition.

  The frictions between the British and the Afrikaners eventually led to the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902). The Boers made pre-emptive strikes and laid siege on a number of towns including Kimberley. The British struck back with reinforcements shipped in from India. Indian soldiers would yet again play an important role in the course of events. Interestingly, Mohandas Gandhi also participated in the war by organizing a group of local Indian civilians into the Natal Indian Ambulance Corps that provided support to the British forces.

  By the middle of 1900, Boer resistance had begun to crumble and the British had taken over their capital, Pretoria. The Boers now shifted to guerrilla tactics and continued to harass their adversaries. The British responded by creating large concentration camps where they herded in the families of the Boer guerrillas. At their height, the concentration camps held 112,000 inmates. Conditions in the camps were appalling and an estimated 28,000 Boers, mostly women and children, died over the course of a year from malnutrition and disease.24 Reports of these civilian casualties would cause an uproar in Europe and embarrass the British government. Boer forces would eventually surrender in May 1902 and the two Boer republics were incorporated into the British empire.

  Cecil Rhodes did not live to see the end of the war as he died in March of that year. He would leave most of his estate for the creation of the famous scholarship that now bears his name. The idea seems to have been to create an Anglo-Saxon elite, educated in Oxford, who would rule the British empire into perpetuity (there was also a hope that the United States would join the British in this grand enterprise). Rhodes lived during the high noon of British power and it would not have occurred to him that his beloved empire would cease to exist within half a century.

  It is somewhat ironic that I owe most of my education to Francis Xavier and Cecil Rhodes. I attended a high school named after the former and my years at Oxford were financed by a scholarship named after the latter. I am quite aware that in both cases I was not the intended beneficiary. This brings us to the tricky question of how to judge individuals from history—do we judge them by their intentions or by the consequences of their actions? Do we judge them only by the standards of their times or by some absolute yardstick? I do not claim to know the answer but these are questions that scholars of history constantly grapple with.

  Nonetheless, while researching this book, I was surprised to come across the following line in Rhodes’ final will and testament: ‘No student shall be qualified or disqualified for election to a Scholarship on account of his race or religious opinions.’25 This is a remarkably liberal statement given the context of the times and Rhodes’ reputation as a racist. Perhaps like Ashoka he wanted future generations to think well of him. Or perhaps he had more shades of grey than I had imagined. The first black Rhodes Scholar was elected as early as 1907 and this elicited such a backlash in the United States that American selection committees did not award the scholarship to another black student till 1963. The Rhodes Trust to its credit, however, persisted with its open policy in other parts of the world and non-whites continued to be elected (Queensland 1908, Jamaica 1910 and so on).

  Note that the British were not the only Europeans occupying swathes of Africa in the late nineteenth century. In earlier times, Africa had been seen as an impediment on the way to Asia and occupation was limited to resupply outposts along the coast. The Suez Canal had reduced the need for re-supply ports but Africa’s interiors were now seen as a source of raw materials to feed industrial economies and of easily conquerable territories to feed imperial egos. France took over large swathes of north and west Africa. Germany had only become a united country in 1870 but it lost no time in claiming territories that we now know as Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Namibia, Togo and Cameroon. When the Omani Sultan of Zanzibar objected to the land grab in East Africa, Otto von Bismarck sent in his warships.26 The Sultan had probably hoped that his British allies would help, but the British turned a blind eye and carried out their own land grab in what is now Kenya. A few years later, they placed their own candidate on the throne and effectively turned Zanzibar into a protectorate.27 Even tiny Belgium got into the act and occupied a large swathe of central Africa, what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

  The takeover of Africa had been so quick that colonial governments often struggled to keep up with it. For example, the British-held territory of Nyasaland (now Malawi) had a budget of just 10,000 pounds per year. This was just enough for ten European civilian officers, two military officers, seventy Sikh soldiers of the Punjab regiment and eighty-five porters from the Zanzibar coast.28 This was all the resources available to run a territory of 94,000 square kilometres with a population of one to two million. Ignoring for a moment the morality of the colonial enterprise, one must admire the sheer scale and audacity of it. National borders across the continent are still marked by the arbitrary straight lines drawn on a map by various European powers to mark out their acquisitions. These boundaries made no geographical or cultural sense on the ground, but this would not have bothered European colonizers who had convinced themselves that Africans had no history or culture.

  Denying a people’s history and culture is an obvious way for a colonizing power to present everything preceding their arrival as the age of darkness and ignorance. Thus, the conquered territory can be termed as Terra Nullius or Nobody’s Land, and the rights of the indigenous people can be denied. Indeed, the Terra Nullius argument was used in Australia till as recently as 1992 when the courts finally began to accept the land rights of the aborigines.

  Not all the African tribes and kingdoms gave in without a fight, and in at least one instance the Europeans were beaten back. We have seen how the Ethiopians had preserved their independence in isolation for centuries despite being surrounded by the Arabs. Unfortunately, Ethiopia was one of the last independent territories left in Africa when the Italians too decided to join the scramble for Africa. In 1885, the Italians simply seized the port of Massawa on the Red Sea and turned Ethiopia into a landlocked country. Emperor Menelik protested against this but found no support from major world powers. Soon he was forced to sign a treaty that ceded Eritrea to Italy in return for recognizing his sovereignty over the highlands of the interior.

  The Italians, however, had no intention of stopping with just the coast. They picked on some differences between the Italian and Amharic texts of the treat
y and occupied northern Ethiopia. Menelik now began to smuggle in modern rifles and train an army. After a few initial skirmishes, the final battle took place at Adowa in March 1896. The Ethiopians inflicted a crushing defeat in which 3179 Italians and 2000 locally recruited auxiliaries were killed.29 Many more were wounded or taken prisoner. At this stage, Menelik may have been able to march on Eritrea but he knew that his supply lines were stretched. Moreover, despite the victory, the Ethiopians had suffered 7000 dead and over 10,000 wounded. So, the emperor accepted a new, more favourable treaty that explicitly recognized his independence.

  Thus, Ethiopia would be the only African country to successfully defend itself against the colonial onslaught. The Italians had retained Eritrea but had been made to look very foolish. Mussolini would try to erase the memory of this defeat by invading and briefly occupying Ethiopia in the 1930s but would lose control of it during World War II. Given their long history of defending their country against both the Arabs and the Europeans, often at great cost, the Ethiopians can be justly proud of their record of preserving their independence.

  The End of Pretence

  When the twentieth century dawned, almost all of the shores of the Indian Ocean were already under European control. The British controlled the Indian subcontinent, Burma, Malaya, Australia and large sections of the east African coast. The French had established themselves in Indo-China (what is now Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia). Even a latecomer like Germany had managed to find a territory to colonize in East Africa and in the north-eastern quarter of New Guinea. This probably left the Dutch feeling inadequate. They had once been the dominant power but had steadily lost influence and territory. The British had taken away their former holdings in South Africa, Sri Lanka and Malaya. Although they had tightened control over their remaining territories in the Indonesian archipelago, they must have felt that history had left them behind. So the Dutch did what all school bullies do when they are feeling down—they beat up the smallest kid in the class.

  The small island of Bali was divided into a network of tiny kingdoms that, despite frequent Dutch interference, had remained effectively independent.30 In 1906, the Dutch used a minor pretext to land a large force on the island armed with modern rifles and machine guns. They knew that the Balinese were armed with no more than spears, shields and a few muskets. They also had a handful of small cannons that can still be viewed at the Bali Museum at Denpasar. They are beautifully decorated with dragon-heads but are of an eighteenth-century design that would have been hopeless against modern weapons. In other words, both sides knew that the Balinese did not stand a chance.

  The Dutch force landed on Sanur beach and faced little resistance as it marched inland. Along the way, it found that all settlements had been abandoned. Only when they approached the royal palace at Denpasar did they see signs of activity. There was no army to greet them but they could see a lot of smoke rising and hear drums beating inside the palace compound. The invading force took up positions and waited. After a while, a ceremonial procession emerged from the main gate including the king, his queens and children, priests, servants and retainers. They all wore funerary garments and their finest jewellery. The women next walked up to the lined soldiers and mocked them, flinging their jewellery and gold coins at them. Then a priest took out a kris, the traditional dagger, and stabbed the king to death in full view. This seems to have been the signal for the Balinese to pull out their krises and make a last charge. The Dutch machine guns and rifles mowed them all down within minutes. Waves of men, women and children kept coming out of the palace and the Dutch kept shooting them down. There were soon mounds of dead bodies, probably numbering over a thousand.

  What the Dutch had just witnessed was the Balinese Hindu rite of ‘Puputan’ or the Last Stand (the Indian equivalent is called jauhar). This extraordinary event took place in the open field in front of what is now the Bali Museum in Denpasar. There is a memorial on the spot to commemorate it. I stood there for a long time trying to imagine the mental state of those who had preferred to die rather than live under foreign domination. The nearby museum has a few photographs that show the aftermath of the massacre.

  The Dutch commanders, however, were not too impressed by what they had just witnessed. They only waited to allow the soldiers to collect all the jewellery and loot the palace before setting it on fire. They then marched to the next kingdom where they witnessed a similar sequence of events. They finally left after forcing the king of Klungkung, the senior most of Bali’s rulers, to sign a humiliating treaty. Not surprisingly, the Balinese were seething with anger that would spill over into riots. This gave the Dutch the pretext to return in 1908 and attack Klungkung. Yet again, the Balinese opted to commit Puputan. The king charged out wielding his kris along with two hundred of his followers and they were all shot dead. His six queens committed ritual suicide; the palace was looted and razed to the ground.

  The Dutch today take great pride in their liberal traditions but the history of their occupation of Indonesia tells a different story. When reports of the events in Bali finally reached Europe, it caused quite an uproar. It did not help that they had themselves photographed the atrocities. By now the supposed civilizing mission of the European colonial enterprise was sounding increasingly hollow. The incidents in Bali were merely the last nails in the coffin. Within a few years, the barbarity of the First World War would take away even the pretence of moral and civilizational superiority.

  11

  From Dusk to a New Dawn

  The twentieth century began with the Indian Ocean rim firmly in the grip of European powers. Even the smallest independent enclave, such as Bali, had been brutally crushed. With the loss of many of their colonies in the Americas, the Europeans had greater control over the Indian Ocean than over the Atlantic. It had taken centuries of war and colonization to create this edifice and not many would have wagered that it would all dissolve within a few decades. The first hint of the turning tide was the Japanese victory over the Russians in 1905. This was the first time that Asians had scored a decisive victory over a European power since Marthanda Varma’s victory over the Dutch. Although this victory may have encouraged later Japanese militarism, it also shattered the myth of European racial and cultural superiority. Then came the First World War.

  The Raider

  Most histories of the First World War (WWI) tend to ignore the Indian Ocean. While much of the action happened in the trenches of Europe and around the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean rim also saw a number of important events that are often left out of the story and are now largely forgotten even in the countries where they took place. One of the fascinating episodes relates to the German light cruiser Emden that single-handedly paralysed Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean for several months.

  When the war began in July 1914, the Emden was one of a handful of German vessels that found themselves stranded on the other side of the world at Tsingtao (Qingdao). This was a German-controlled enclave along the Chinese coast and is still famous for a beer brewery established by the Germans. It soon became clear that Tsingtao and other German colonies in the East were not defensible and the ships would have to find their way home. They left as a convoy to cross the Pacific in an attempt to get to the Atlantic by rounding South America. Karl von Muller, the commander of the Emden, however, asked for permission to head west to the Indian Ocean. Permission was granted and the Emden slipped through neutral Dutch-controlled waters into the Indian Ocean. Muller added a fake smoke funnel in order to disguise his ship as a British cruiser.

  By early September, the Emden was in the Bay of Bengal where it began to systematically attack and sink ships belonging to the British and their allies. There was panic as no one knew what was happening; British intelligence had been under the impression that the Emden was in the Pacific along with the rest of the German fleet. Karl von Muller, interestingly, soon developed a reputation as a gentleman privateer because he minimized casualties, treated his prisoners well and let them go at the first op
portunity.1 It was only through information gleaned from the released crews that authorities in Calcutta realized what was happening.

  On 22 September, the Emden unexpectedly appeared off the coast of Madras and proceeded to bombard the port. The raid lasted for barely half an hour but the 125-odd shells set ablaze oil containers and threw the city into chaos. The ship then disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared. Although the damage was limited, the raid had a major psychological impact on the city and for a generation the word ‘Emden’ would be used as Tamil slang to denote maverick cunning or resourcefulness. I was surprised, therefore, to find that few of Chennai’s younger residents knew about this episode and not one could tell me the location of the plaque commemorating it. Eventually, I found it along the eastern wall of the High Court (across the road from the line of stalls selling mobile phones and other electronics). It marks the spot where one of the shells had landed.

  The Emden now sailed down the coast towards Sri Lanka, capturing and sinking more ships along the way. Eventually, it headed for Diego Garcia, a remote British-held island in the southern Indian Ocean. Muller was pleasantly surprised to find that the islanders had not heard about the war! Modern communications technology had not yet connected every point on the planet. The Emden was, therefore, able to carry out repairs and refuel in peace. At this stage, Muller could have decided to head home around the Cape or make for an Ottoman-held port on the Red Sea, but he opted for his most audacious raid yet—an attack on Penang in the Malacca Straits.